


'Til the Sirens Sound

by dtkrushnics



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:32:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1669787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dtkrushnics/pseuds/dtkrushnics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title taken from the song Earth by Sleeping At Last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Til the Sirens Sound

When Castiel first hears the news, he does not believe it. Metatron’s a _liar,_ he tells himself, a filthy liar with dirt on his shoes and a rip at the elbow of his cardigan. But the fear – the fear is worse than the belief. The pounding at his ribs, the slick slide of claws through his brain down to his chest, it makes him so dizzy. Dizzy, like a top spinning on wet ice. He is balanced on a precipice, and the wolves are approaching.

There is a shine of crimsoned silver in Metatron’s hand, and he thinks, _no._ He is taunted with it, and he would reach forth and throttle that pretender if he were not chained. He digs his nails into the armrests instead, imagining the tear of Metatron’s skin beneath them, shaking down to his very atoms. But it is a _lie_ , it has to be, it is a ploy that will not work on Castiel, not this time, he will not be fooled.

The fear backs him up the cliff until his feet begin to slip. He cannot keep up with the glide of the ice, it is moving much too quickly for him, and the top is wobbling. Steady now, he tells himself. One wrong move and you’ll skin your knees, scrape your elbows, trip over yourself trying to stand again. You will not be _able_ to stand again.

When he is released and the liar captured, the fear collapses into denial. There is no need to make the trip, because he is safe. Dean is safe. Metatron is a storyteller, that is his trade. He deals in conniving words and tricks. Dean is safe, because Castiel would feel it if he were not. Dean is strong. He is built of iron and earth, he is pure and raw and absolute. He is _strong._

But beneath the deceitful rising of relief, there is a chilly hand pressing into his flesh. Frost crackles over his heart. It fills the caverns of his atriums and ventricles, makes its sloshy way through his veins, creeps down his spine, floods the pit of his stomach. He needs to know. He _needs_ to know. He needs to see him.

The rumbling of the car around him envelops him and shakes him inside. He vibrates with it, reaching blindly with an unknown force the closer he gets to the bunker. This barely beating thing in his chest has turned traitorous. It is trying to push its way out of his chest, shoving past his shrunken lungs. He gets out of the car, but there is a feeling in him like he has swallowed a hurricane and he cannot, for the life of him, find any shelter.

In the approximated second that it takes him to cross the threshold, he feels a million years pass by. He lifts his foot, and it is as though he has removed the rubber stopper of his body. Everything inside of him drains away, slushes across the floor in a dirty, oily way. The emptiness in him stretches for miles. It pulls him in every cardinal direction until he is fit to fall right into ruin. His shoe makes a sound like thunder when it lands on the floor of the bunker.

Just as the air was electrified when they first met, it is stale when they reunite now.

The rime in his chest melts to hot, sticky mud. Mud that stifles, that fills his nostrils and his throat and he closes his eyelids to pry the image from them but there is mud there too, and he cannot breathe.

Dean was always warm, he remembers. He glowed so brightly, and he was so beautiful, and he was always warm. Castiel presses trembling fingers to those lifeless ones, and they are cold. He is gray, and he wears bruises like medals, and he is cold.

There is something screaming inside of Castiel. It rips at him, wild and heaving, frothing at the mouth like a hound of Hell. It terrifies him. It comforts him. He kicks out at the top, sending it skittering across the ice. He will not accept this. He will _not._

He places his hand, carefully, on Dean’s motionless chest. He swirls around the bitter remains of his stolen grace and gathers it at the tips of his fingers. He will do whatever necessary. He will bring his stone soldier back.

A hand catches his wrist, and _no, impossible._ He looks up.

The mud chokes him. It laps at his lungs like it belongs there, curls up in his molecules. He falls. He skins his knees. He scrapes his elbows. The cliff crumbles from under him. The top gives one last erratic, fitful spin and topples, with a deafening crash of finality, onto its side.

 

           


End file.
